


Phaethon

by Cranberries (Winchester_Werewolf)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Character Turned Into Vampire, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Female Harry Potter, Foster Care, Hedwig owl cuddles, Hogwarts Third Year, Human/Vampire Relationship, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Marauders, Multi, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Protective Remus Lupin, Vampires, Violence, girl!Harry, human-centaur relations, social workers are a bane, vampire!Harry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-28
Packaged: 2019-10-10 04:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17418785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_Werewolf/pseuds/Cranberries
Summary: "Her parents were dead. And when Harriett curled up on the cot, wishing she had the invisibility cloak to cuddle, she wished she was dead, too."-Harriet tried to be good. She tried to do what she was told even when she didn’t want to, tried to be quiet and pretend like she wasn’t even there. But no matter what she did, how much she tried to be a mouse, everything with teeth seemed to find her to take their pound of flesh.And now, what Harriet tried to do most of all was to never, ever tell.[Featuring: a female Harry Potter AU, the intrusion of social services (because it's dead weird social services were never involved), an escaped convict from Azkaban, some self-destructive behaviours, and vampires. Because we all need vampires.]





	1. Orange Lavender

**Author's Note:**

> Hullo! 
> 
> This is something that struck me like a bolt of lightening. I've been working on for almost a year, have a well-organised playlist for, and have many calluses from frantically writing down every single plot point and detail in my notebook. It looks like it's going to be a monster three-parter. 
> 
> Please note: this begins darkly, and has elements that can be triggering to people who've experienced similar lives, namely CSA and emotional abuse -- nothing is written in graphic detail and I endeavour to always, always add warnings in the notes if I do. The issues are not neatly dealt with as intrinsic and insidious abuse isn't easily unraveled but justice is served, especially to those that deserve it, when the time is right. This has helped me a lot to write, even if it's not easy.
> 
>  
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: allusions to CSA (nothing graphic) and dubious consent between a minor and a... not so minor.

Out of all the summers Harriet had ever spent with her aunt and uncle, this one was turning out to be the worst.

Somehow, Aunt Petunia had grown _meaner_ than ever before. As soon as Harriet had gotten through the front door of Number Four, Aunt Petunia told Uncle Vernon to lock her trunk in the loft. Then Aunt Petunia made Harriet put Hedwig in the utility room atop the washing machine and said that Harriet wasn’t allowed to let her out of her cage for the rest of the summer, not even to clean it. Aunt Petunia had said this so sharply, Harriet had been too frightened to protest. Or confused: she’d been allowed to keep Hedwig with her in Dudley’s second bedroom the year before.

There was a new lock on the cupboard under the stairs.

It was Uncle Vernon that forced her in when she didn’t move to get inside. Harriet had cried and cried when they locked her inside again, squished onto the rickety old camping cot from when she was little, now mildewy and without any blankets. Uncle Vernon had forcibly snapped the grille shut when Harriet hadn’t stopped her ‘carrying on’. 

It was as though Harriet had never received her Hogwarts letter; as though life in Privet Drive hadn’t ever been different. Aunt Petunia would let Harriet out to use the loo and cook the breakfasts and locked her back in until the hoovering needed doing. Uncle Vernon crept down in the middle of the night to take her out when all of Surrey was asleep. Dudley took great delight in jumping loudly on the stairs again, the wood crying out beneath his weight now he was the size of a baby elephant.

All other hours were spent in the cupboard. It hadn’t changed like Harriet had. The old cot mattress smelt like dust and mould, and Harriet sneezed whenever she laid down. Old toy soldiers guarded the tops of the water and power meters, coated with sticky dust. Harriet even found old school drawings from when she was littler tucked between old bottles of bleach and cleaning rags. She flattened them out on top of her skinny thighs, squinting to see them with the dim light creeping through the gaps in the cupboard door. Most were of flowers and Mrs. Figg’s cats, a couple of a stick-figure Harriet in a purple fairy dress in front of a castle, and of… her parents.

At least, what she _thought_ her parents looked like. She’d done her mum’s hair pink and her dad’s blue, which clashed with the red and bright green outfits Harriet had drawn them, holding branch-like hands with a smiling little Harriet in purple shorts and a green top. Aunt Petunia had gotten all sour-lipped the first time Harriet had drawn a picture of her parents in nursery; she hadn’t needed to say so for Harriet to know she wasn’t meant to.  It made her feel stupid now: she scrunched them all back up again and shoved them through the gap in the wall where the mice got in from the garage.  

Her parents were dead. And when Harriett curled up on the cot, wishing she had the invisibility cloak to cuddle, she wished she was dead, too.

 

 

* * *

 

The bacon was sizzling in the frying pan, drowned in butter and making Harriet’s glasses steam up and her mouth water. She was tempted to gobble it up straight from the pan but reluctantly scooped each slice up once they were done and slid them onto a plate. It had only been a week since Harriet had been sentenced to Privet Drive and she already wanted to stop existing.

Dudley’s new television was playing loudly on the side-table in the conservatory, and Dudley himself was at the table still in his pyjamas, chewing away at a large plate of eggs and beans. Uncle Vernon was reading the paper with his nose in the air, his plate gooey with brown sauce and egg yolk, his coffee cup resting on the big swell of his belly and making loud sniffs each time he read something he found particularly unpleasant. The only one who wasn’t partaking of a fry-up was Aunt Petunia, who was eating orange slices with a particularly tight-lipped expression Harriet didn’t care to understand. Where Uncle Vernon and Dudley were wider than they were tall, Aunt Petunia seemed to be as perpetually skinny and sharp as her temper. Most of the glossy magazines tucked neatly in the living room magazine stand were earmarked at diets and recipes; Harriet had never seen Aunt Petunia so much as eat a fried tomato, let alone several rashers of bacon. But it wasn’t the orange slices that Harriet found strange: Aunt Petunia’s watery blue eyes were switching from the telly to husband with each slice, eyeing the front-page like she scrutinised Mrs. Next-Door and the plumber who always seemed to be paying a visit.

Not that it mattered: if Aunt Petunia had suddenly taken interest in the news and wasn’t looking at Harriet like _that_ , she didn’t care. Not really, anyway. Harriet just wanted to have breakfast over so Uncle Vernon could leave for work and Dudley off to Piers Polkiss’s house, then she’d only have Aunt Petunia to tangle with until she finished her chores. Without her uncle and Dudley, summers at Privet Drive was just that: hoovering, the hum of the air-conditioner, and the low chatter of Aunt Petunia’s mid-day soaps on the telly, the sharp clean scent of Lemon Pledge and Fairy washing-up liquid.

And the underlying threat of Oakridge hanging in the air like damp in a basement.

Harriet obediently brought the plate of bacon and placed it on the table next to the tureen of steaming baked beans and the toast stand. She eyed the golden triangles hungrily but didn’t dare lift a finger to take one. If she was lucky, Aunt Petunia would give her one after Uncle Vernon’s company car pulled out of the garage. If she was unlucky – which Harriet mostly was – she’d get nothing and Aunt Petunia would watch her like a hawk so she didn’t nick any whilst she cleaned the breakfast things. If Harriet was feeling bold, she’d take it anyway and damn the consequences – but when she thought about it, (really thought about it, wiping down the counters with a soapy sponge), she couldn’t risk it.

She needed her school things from the loft.

If Hedwig were let of her cage, Harriet might’ve been able to write someone from school, like Hermione Granger, and borrow their schoolbooks and smuggle them beneath her cot. It just _wasn’t fair:_ all her subjects had two scrolls worth of summer homework, and Professor McGonagall had given her special work just for her, and she couldn’t even do any of it. Nobody’d given her special work before. _And_ Professor Binns was getting to witch burnings and whatnot in History of Magic, and it was the first time Harriet had learnt anything about just witches without any wizards. Even if they were just getting burned. It made her mad. Mostly she wanted to know how the witches got away in case Uncle Vernon decided to tie her to the stake one afternoon. He looked close to it lots, especially after last summer.

Harriet shuddered as she stacked the dishwasher. She’d spent a _whole summer_ spent in Oakridge and some old woman’s guest bedroom. All over a stupid _pudding_. She almost hadn’t been allowed to go back to Hogwarts, until Professor McGonagall had turned up at Oakridge on the third of September to fetch her. It’d been all awkward because Professor McGonagall had been in witches’ robes and one of the matrons and her social worker had told her all about Harriet destroying the big girls’ recreation room and tipping over the television, leaving the carpet covered in glass, and making the fish-tank flood and ruin the beanbags and magazines when they wouldn’t let her leave for London on the first. McGonagall hadn’t been mad like Harriet reckoned she would be. (Harriet had tried to imagine how her Head of House would’ve reacted if Harriet’d done the same to the Gryffindor common room – but could only envision herself transfigured into a footstool for the rest of her natural life). No, McGonagall had only put a hand on her forearm and given it a squeeze, and Harriet had a funny feeling McGonagall had magicked it all away because the matron had let her get her things and leave, and McGonagall didn’t even have to sign the Going Out book for her.

All Harriet’s professors had excused her for not having done any homework if her schoolwork during term was good enough. Even Professor Snape, who pretended she was nothing but dungeon mould, let her off. (Though she reckoned Dumbledore had something to do with wishing away Snape’s work because Snape treated her even more like a bad smell, even if she didn’t get detention. Or disembowelment.). With a sense of dread, Harriet knew in her belly they wouldn’t let her off this year. They couldn’t: not for a _second_ time. And she didn’t want to get sentenced to Oakridge just to get out of it. Even if it was tempting.

Her only hope was being good for her Aunt and Uncle, and finding a way to convince Aunt Petunia to give her her school books back. _Just not my wand_ , Harriet thought to herself morosely, dropping a _Fairy_ tablet into the little compartment and closing the dishwasher door, turning it on with a tired finger, _She’d rather me in Oakridge than have my wand back_.

It was a hard compromise to make.

“I’ll be off then, Petunia,” Uncle Vernon announced from the breakfast table, making Harriet flinch. She didn’t bother turning around; hearing him place a smacking kiss on her aunt’s cheek, slap Dudley’s blubbery shoulder, and make a racket putting on his suit jacket, straightening his tie in the mirror above the coat-tree, grabbing his briefcase, and marching out of the door like a loud and pompous bullfrog. It was the same routine Harriet had known since she was a baby.

“Have you had enough to eat, Diddy-Darling?” Aunt Petunia asked in a simper, and Harriet made a face as she went to empty out the used coffee grounds from the machine. A good amount was still left in the carafe and Harriet smiled to herself: only Uncle Vernon drank coffee, and rather then let it go to waste, Aunt Petunia often let Harriet have it. Or she could just… _take_ it. Aunt Petunia likely wouldn’t notice. Maybe.

“Yeah,” Dudley grunted through a mouthful of beans, which he promptly gulped, and smeared the leftover sauce on his many chins onto one of the nice linen napkins. Grand. Another thing for Harriet to do. She reckoned he did it on purpose, just to make her life more difficult. “I’m gonna go to Piers’s,” he finished, and then promptly left the table.

“I’ve laid out some clothes!” Aunt Petunia called after him and smiled to herself indulgently. Harriet vomited in her mouth a little and fetched a chipped enamel mug from the cabinet above the oven hood to sneak the remaining cold coffee. She held the mug behind the open cupboard door so Aunt Petunia wouldn’t be able to see it at first glance, sneaking it in small noiseless sips. Not fifteen minutes later, the front door opened and slammed, and the garage door opened, no doubt for Dudley to get his stupid racing bike he could scarcely ride. It was like watching a pig on a unicycle, and Harriet snorted, delicately, into her coffee mug. It was cold and bitter, and appropriate.

The telly switched off and Uncle Vernon’s abandoned newspaper rustled. Maybe Aunt Petunia was doing the crossword. Maybe it would take all the cross out of her aunt with it, Harriet thought, stashing the mug behind the kitchen roll on the worktop and went about collecting the breakfast things: the bacon, freshly cooked and still warm, was cling-filmed and put in the fridge to get sad and soggy. It’d probably be made into a monstrous bacon sandwich drowned in brown sauce for Dudley or Uncle Vernon’s afternoon tea. Just the thought made Harriet’s stomach growl.

There were two whole triangles of toast left, a whole entire slice. Greedily, Harriet asked, “Aunt Petunia?”

“Yes?” Aunt Petunia snapped. She was reading the front page of the paper with a strange look on her face. Her manicured fingers were clawed into the paper like she was holding a dead animal.

“May I have some toast,” she asked as meekly as she could, “Please?”

Aunt Petunia waved her hand like Harriet was a particularly annoying fly, so Harriet thought it was okay to crunch into the dry pieces over the sink. Maybe today wouldn’t be so bad, Harriet reasoned, black coffee and a whole piece of toast, it wasn’t a Hogwarts breakfast by a long shot but…

“Do you know this man?” Aunt Petunia’s voice suddenly asked out into the now-quiet, Dursley-free house.

Harriet turned to look at her aunt in surprise. Aunt Petunia was holding up the newspaper to her, the front page blazoned with ‘ _Beware Britain!_ _Escaped Convict: Armed and Extremely Dangerous!_ ’ in big black letters above a picture of a skeleton. Except it wasn’t a skeleton: it was a person. An ugly, skeletal person with glinting eyes and long, tangled hair, staring statically into the camera with a frightening grimace.

The first thing Harriet wanted to say was that Oakridge was a Home for girls, and only a prison for dumped kids and not _escaped lunatics_ , but found herself unable to do so. Mostly because Aunt Petunia would probably say a prison for lunatics was precisely where she belonged – so Harriet mutely shook her head. It was probably the oddest question Aunt Petunia had ever asked her… as if Harriett would know a stranger on the frontpage of a Muggle newspaper.

Aunt Petunia frowned deeply, her lipstick disappearing into her mouth and reappearing like a wound. She then shook her head and reached up to pat the curlers stuck in her fresh perm. The newspaper laid forgotten on the now bare breakfast table. “Clean up, would you,” she said, her voice back to normal, “There’s a load of towels in the machine that need hanging.”

The question stuck with Harriet for the rest of the morning as she went about her chores. She fed Hedwig some owl pellets and old carrot tops from the scraps bin, hung out the towels (which involved moving and stepping on an old bucket to reach the clothesline), watered the garden, and put on another load of washing. By mid-day, Harriet was certain she had never met the man in the newspaper. She’d never met a convict before (save Hagrid, but he was innocent, so it didn’t count) and she couldn’t ever remember meeting a man who looked so much like a dead person. Except, perhaps, for her horrible Potions Master, Professor Snape.

Aunt Petunia must have been confused.   

The rest of the day was less eventful: Harriet fixed Aunt Petunia a salad and a glass of squash for lunch after Dudley called to say he was staying at the Polkisses until tea-time. Harriet went about the house hoovering and dusting until Aunt Petunia left in the afternoon with a gift basket to visit Mrs. So-and-So and their new baby, and even then, her Aunt gave her a withering look like Harriet was going to burn the house down if left alone as she closed, and locked, the front door. Harriet didn’t even bother checking the sliding door to the garden and the utility door to the side-path along the garage: no doubt Aunt Petunia had locked them with the house keys.

A great big watery sigh escaped Harriet’s mouth and she quickly stamped her foot. She was not going to get upset. It didn’t matter if she was locked inside. Even if she wasn’t a prisoner inside Number Four, where else would she go if the doors weren’t locked? There was _nowhere_ for her to go. She had no muggle money, and she didn’t fancy…

Well, she didn’t fancy doing _That_ right now, and then quickly snuffed all that out of her head. She imagined bricking _All_ _That_ up, building a wall to shove it behind, imagined she had a big drill and planks of wood, and was blocking off that part of her head like Uncle Vernon had the front door when she was eleven, trying to get her Hogwarts letters to stop coming through the post slot.

She didn’t know how long she spent standing in the empty front hall, staring at the locked front door. A dim, stupid part of her brain suggested she sneak up the staircase and try her luck at getting into the loft -- but she let the thought fall somewhere onto the carpet. Uncle Vernon would find out. He had a way of finding out all the bad things Harriet did and punishing her for it.

Instead, Harriet took the finished load of wet laundry and put it in the tumble-dryer, gave Hedwig a few head scratches and a kiss through the bars, washed her hands in the kitchen sink, and crawled back into the cupboard.

 

* * *

 

She woke sometime later to Aunt Petunia rapping her bony knuckles against the cupboard door.

“Up!” Her shrill voice hissed through the open grille, “Get up! I need you to run to the grocery! Get up, quickly!”

And with a final knock, her aunt’s hard-heeled shoes marched up the hall. Harriet groaned, and shoved her scratchy woollen blanket off. When she emerged, bleary-eyed and pulling on her sneakers, Aunt Petunia was standing by the coat rack, pulling coins out of her purse to count them in her thin palms.

“Milk,” Aunt Petunia instructed, “I need it for the potato and leek pie, and some double-cream.”

She handed Harriet the coins, and Harriet realised, looking through the rippled glass in the front door, that she must have slept a long while: the sun was beginning to set.

“ _Potter_ ,” Aunt Petunia said, and Harriet blinked rapidly and flushed horribly. Sleepiness made her slow. “Be sharpish, I need to get supper on: Vernon will be home soon.” And then shoved her toward the front door.

Cars were pulling up into the driveways of houses along Harriet’s walk to the grocery. Husbands returning home from work, greeted by sprinklers or their children in grubby clothes from playing outside all day and wives in housecoats and aprons with stains on. Harriet knew from the tortuous show-and-tells at the local primary school that most dads around Little Whinging had jobs in London. Uncle Vernon boasted lots about _Grunnings_ and took delight in showing off his company car. Aunt Petunia had told Harriet plenty she ought to consider herself lucky to live in Little Whinging, but she couldn’t bloody well think of why because everyone thought her a delinquent. What good was low pebble-dashed fences and shiny Bentleys when everyone eyed her like she was thirsting to throw bricks through their windows? (The fact she _was_ , was beside the point).

Even as she walked to the grocery, up Privet Drive and onto Wisteria Walk, she saw Mr. and Mrs. Nineteen eye her warily as they kissed on the stoop outside their front door. It made Harriet slouch into herself and hurry up. She knew she looked stupid: she wore one of Dudley’s old t-shirts which hung off her like a potato sack, and baggy denim shorts from Oxfam that didn’t properly reach her knees. The sneakers she got were from Oakridge before she’d even gotten to Hogwarts and now pinched her toes. Too small shoes were better than Dudley’s old cast-offs: at least she didn’t trip in them, even if her second-hand socks sagged over the back and got chewed up by the pavement.

She saw their daughters ‘round Little Whinging lots. They wore floaty summer dresses and sandals and their hair was all twisted up with sparkly clips and had glitter sprayed on. They had butterfly bead necklaces and short overalls and strappy vests that made their mums throw cardigans at them out the front door. They stared at Harriet like she was a rat and some even crossed the street when she walked down it, holding hands with painted nails with little handbags looped around their arms. Most thought her a boy. A dirty, smelly, weird looking boy.

Harriet felt as dirty as she looked, and kicked a pebble along as she walked, glumly, in the heat of the setting sun.   

The grocery was on the corner of Little Whinging’s small high-street, not detached like the big chain shops were. A woman around Aunt Petunia’s age was waiting outside the front, smoking a cigarette she had taken out of her shiny handbag, sharply dressed with big curly hair. She eyed Harriet warily when she walked up and jangled a set of keys as though Harriet could be spooked off when she got close. With a start, Harriet realised it was the mother of one of the kids she and Dudley had gone to primary with and shrunk in on herself further. The lady’s eyes burned into the side of Harriet’s head. _Just get the milk and go_ , Harriet thought to herself, and made a beeline for the fridges as soon as the doorbell jangled.

A man in a tweedy business suit was buying cigarettes when she got to the counter, juggling a pint of milk and a carton of cream in her scarecrow arms. He and the man behind the counter had a five-minute discussion about cricket before moving on and then Harriet found herself being eyed, yet again, like a criminal.

“Milk and cream,” the owner commented suspiciously. He punched them into the till with accusing fingers and the drawer shot open. Harriet reached into her pocket and dropped Aunt Petunia’s coins onto the counter.

“Yes,” Harriet replied. “May I have a bag, please?”

The owner dutifully bagged them and wrote out a receipt which he stapled to the front. Then he sniffed, wriggled his nose like a rabbit, and said, “Turn out your pockets.”

Harriet blinked and froze. “What?”

“Turn out your pockets, _please_.”

If Harriet were bold, which she wasn’t, she might have exploded. It wasn’t – she didn’t – she wasn’t a thief! She had never, not once, stolen from the grocery. Not even when she was littler and wanted to know what a chocolate bar tasted like, wanted a sticker from inside a packet of crisps. She’d not stolen them, because she knew she would get caught, knew that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would punish her into the next century once they found out. And well, everyone thought so bad of her anyway that _doing_ something bad –

Harriet turned out her empty pockets, pulled out the cotton lining and tugged it for effect. She had nothing except the coins Aunt Petunia had given her, which the owner quickly picked up and dropped into the till with an angry look, like Harriet was bad for _not being bad_.

She took the milk and cream feeling hot and prickly. Her stomach shrivelled up like a sultana and the corners of her eyes pricked with tears. She hadn’t done anything, and she left the grocery feeling like she had, and when she passed the magazine rack on the way out, Harriet did something very stupid.

She grabbed a magazine, a teenage one with a pretty girl on the cover, and pelted out the front door as fast as her legs could take her, the shop owner yelling behind her.

She ran with the milk, the cream, and the magazine all the way down Fuchsia Drive and onto Wostershire Street toward where the big London storm-drain was, with the chain-link fences and the stretch of yellowed, overgrown grass.  There were big bushes there she could hide under until it blew over and Harriet felt hot tears pour down her cheeks. This was such bullshit, being stuck in Privet Drive, being in the cupboard again, Oakridge a proverbial hanging guillotine blade. Uncle Vernon an _actual_ hanging guillotine blade.

Harriet threw herself beneath the first biggest bush she could find. The grass scratched and irritated her bare legs, but she didn’t care, and scooted through the soft, hot dirt toward the trunk. Small branches and leaves got caught in her hair. She left them there and cried.

This was – this was the _shittest_ thing to happen. Ever. Why did Harriet get the shitty end of the stick each time something bad happened? She wanted Nana Evans then, so horribly it made her stomach hurt so much she wanted to be sick. Why couldn’t Nana Evans have taken her instead and not gotten cancer when she was littler? Nana Evans was the nicest person Harriet had met and she let her do things Harriet was never normally let do, like sit at the table and watch telly and have bubble baths. It still made Harriet miserable when she thought about it and she wept harder. Aunt Petunia had only taken her to visit half a dozen times and Harriet had fallen in love instantly, especially when Nana Evans had said nice things about her, that she was smart and pretty and a good girl. Would Nana Evans think she was smart and pretty and a good girl now she’d nicked a magazine, just because she was mad?

 Harriet huffed and choked on her own tears, snot dribbling down her nose, her hands clammy as she shook with the force of her own anguish. She was sorry, _she was so sorry_. For lifting the magazine, for wearing big and dirty old clothes, for breaking school rules, for smashing up the big girls’ rec-room, for running away instead of getting caught like she deserved, for making Aunt Petunia so mad with magic, for existing when she oughtn’t…

She was so caught up in her own tears she didn’t hear a pair of feet approach her hiding place, and only jumped out of herself when a branch, covered in dry, prickling leaves, was lifted out of the way.

A pair of black boots, rubber-soled with yellow stitching, stuck out in front of her, bathed in lavender evening light. Whoever they belonged to squatted down to peer into Harriet’s space, a teenage boy’s handsome face with dark eyes meeting Harriet’s own.

“You alright?” His voice was mellow, and his pupils blown like the burn-outs got at Oakridge. He almost sounded amused. As if any of it was funny. A kid Harriet used to know at Oakridge played rummy because she found it funny, so stoned out of her brain she couldn’t feel anything until her fingers were all bloody and mushed up. Her pinkie finger had gotten amputated and the surgeon did it to teach her a lesson. She got caught huffing hairspray the next day after the doctors wouldn’t give her painkillers. Or that was what Harriet had heard, anyway. Harriet hadn’t seen her again in a long time.

The boy wasn’t missing any fingers, though. He was only missing a proper shirt: he squatted in the summer breeze in scruffy jeans and an undervest, his white skinny collarbones sticking out. Aunt Petunia would have had a conniption if she was there. 

“Yes!” Harriet snapped snottily, wiping her face on the sleeve of her too-big t-shirt. It was purple with neon triangles on; if it weren’t so dirty all the time, it might’ve been one of her favourites of a bad bunch. Dudley had thrown it out when he was nine. It was still too big on her by several sizes and hung off one shoulder, the collar stretched out.  “I’m _fine_.”

“Okay, luv, if you say so,” said the boy, but didn’t drop the bush branch. Instead, he dropped his bum to the dirt and shoved his hand into his front jeans pocket. Harriet was sure for a horrifying moment he was going to pull out his bits but he came out with a crumpled cigarette carton instead. “Want a smoke?”

His hands shook when he lit Harriet’s cigarette, his irises shivering in their whites minutely. Harriet hadn’t had a smoke since forever and her veins rushed quickly with nicotine as she breathed it in through snotty airways.

The boy laughed.

“What?” Harriet asked, not as angrily as she’d like. The crying had me her feel all numb inside, disconnected. Like she wasn’t really there.

“Nothing, nothing,” he answered easily, throwing a loose, liquidy arm out and then brought it up to scratch at his messy brown hair. It hung in a grown-out bowl-cut on either side of his face, touching the tops of high, sharp cheekbones, and was shorn at the back. He was pretty, Harriet supposed, in a burn-out kind of way. Beads of sweat ran down the back of his slim neck. “What’s your name?” he asked, and lit his own cigarette, breathing in and holding the smoke in his chest for a moment before blowing a large smoke ring.

Harriet watched it float off into the pale purple sky, street lights and distant stars glinting orange in contrast, before answering, “Harry.”

“Harry?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “Short for Harriet.”

She wanted to appear, well – she wanted to appear cool. Even if she was covered in snot, and Harriet was _not_ a cool name. This boy was cool, and he looked at her through the corners of his eye as he took another drag from his fag. “Huh.”

A silence fell.

“Wh-what’s your name?” Harriet asked timidly after a couple moments, wincing when her voice broke. From the cigarette and tears and nothing else.

“Mmmm, Leon,” he said slowly and smiled at her. His smile was sharp but not mean, like Uncle Vernon and Mr. Jerry and Mr. Bingley. It fell after a few moments like his lips weren’t strong enough. He pointed his fag at her and little cinders fell to smoulder in the dirt. “You live near here?”

“Yeah,” Harriet answered meekly and chuffed some more. She had missed smoking. “Privet Drive.”

“Huh,” the boy, Leon, said again, like it meant something. He made three more smoke rings and blew a smokeball through one, his eyes drooping closed, aimed at the sky. It made Harriet’s cheeks grow very hot.

She knew she must have looked a sight, her hair all tangled up, eyes itchy and red. There was snot on the sleeves of her top. But Leon hadn’t looked at her like she was gross. As far as she could tell, anyway.

“It’s getting late,” he said and looked at her properly this time, his legs bent in front of him, holding one of his liquidy-drugged arms to the sky, fingers holding his cigarette on a pedestal. He looked like he should start nodding off, the way Cassie and her smacked-out friends did when they snuck off behind the bike shed with pilfered dinner spoons, old Lucozade bottles wearing hats of tin foil, and the vinegar from the dinner table that was meant to go on their fish and chips. “Shouldn’t your parents be getting worried?”

Harriet let out a short, watery laugh. It came out mean and hurt her nose. “I don’t have any parents.”

Leon took a while to look surprised, like a flower blooming on a still-frame film. “What?”

“They’re dead.”

Then he looked suspicious, like he thought she was lying.

“Honest,” Harriet said and rolled her eyes, “I live with my aunt and uncle,” she scratched her arm and then tacked on, “Sometimes.”

“Sometimes… what?”

Harriet decided she didn’t like Leon much, even if he was nice to look at.

“I board at a school and I go to Oakridge, sometimes. Respite. Y’know.” She shrugged uncomfortably. Keeping Harriet was a chore for the Dursleys and social workers loved to take her out of their hands, it felt like. Though it was Harriet that needed the break from the Dursleys, not the other way around.  

“Oakridge?” Leon suddenly laughed, electric in the dying light. His dark eyes glittered brightly. “That girls’ place with the fences? Shit.”

“S’ppose,” said Harriet. She smoked some more. Kept the smoke in her lungs until they crackled, and her eyes started to shake.

“Explains how you know how to smoke,” Leon said, casually, the miasma of his presence dimming like a dying candle. “Most just blow it all out. Waste it.”

If Harriet were bold, she’d make a comment about also being able to blow other things. But she wasn’t that bold. And Leon seemed too… she didn’t know, but she found herself not wanting to mess up.

She was thinking quietly on this when Leon reached out and poked her leg, on the bruises on her knees, and she jolted back, hissing.

“What was that for?” She demanded, and Leon laughed at her. It was too grownup a laugh for Harriet to tell if being laughed by him at meant anything at all.

“How’d you get those?”

“None of your business!”

Leon just laughed more. “I think I get it now,” His arm was still stretched out between them. Harriet dropped her cigarette when it burned her fingers, all burnt to the filter. When his fingers touched her shin, he stroked the back of them across the bruises, like Harriet was a spooked animal. “You’re a sweet thing, aren’t you? Aren’t you, hmm?”

She was being preyed on. This, Harriet knew. This wasn’t new territory. It didn’t surprise her. Not really. Why else had he gone to a bush for a crying kid? He was a creep. A pretty, dark-eyed creep that was making Harriet’s chest feel funny in a way she wasn’t sure she liked or not.

“Where are you even _from_?” Harriet asked tetchily instead. She didn’t move her legs away from Leon’s fingers, which were still on her skin, above the scratch from the metal doorstop where the Dursley’s chintz carpet in the master bedroom became smooth bathroom tile. Like the man in the Muggle papers, Harriet had never seen Leon around Little Whinging before. She was sure she would have remembered him if he had been.

Leon smiled again, though all to one side, lifting the right side of his face. His eyes sparkled in the headlights of a passing car. Even smacked out or whatever, Harriet realised it hadn’t made Leon slow. “Up near Falsley, five miles from ‘ere.”

“Why’re you here then?” _Why’re you doing this?_ Harriet didn’t say.

Leon shrugged. “Just because.”

“Just because?”

“I was bored, luv. Wanted a walk. Wanted a smoke.”

“And what, wanted a shag?” Said a voice that wasn’t Harriet’s, not really, though it came out of her mouth, sharp and mocking. Served him right for poking her knees. (Served her right for wearing shorts, probably, too).

Leon smiled properly this time, big and wide on both sides, as though laughing at a secret only he had. An indulgence, maybe. Another grownup thing Harriet didn’t get. “I suppose.” He looked stoned out of his brain. Maybe he was in Privet Drive looking for drugs. Or someone to rob in order to buy drugs. Why come five miles to hang out near a storm drain?

 _Are you offering?_ Harriet expected Leon to ask, but he didn’t. He leant back onto his bum, sucking in the last of his cigarette until it burnt down to the filter and then flicked it away.

“Bit young, aren’t you?” Leon asked instead. He only part seemed interested in what her answer would be. “Aren’t you scared?”

Harriet snorted again. Young? Yes. Scared? Not much. A little scared, maybe. If it went bad, Harriet reckoned she could outrun him quickly, have an easier time of squeezing through the hole in the chicken-wire fence.  “So? Age doesn’t mean anything,” Harriet answered, “And I’m _not_ scared.”

Age had never changed anything before. Harriet had been younger then and was still young now. It stopped nobody. Not even Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile Award. It meant nothing and besides, it was _supposed_ to be different when Harriet… when girls…

Well, that was the shame of it, wasn’t it? The shame Harriet didn’t talk of and the shame Harriet performed were two different things. One was not spoken of, brushed off with sweets, hidden in cupboards and quiet bathrooms, driven an hour away to a brown building with blue doors and fences with a ‘ _Don’t say anything, you hear me, don’t say anything! Nobody will ever believe you!_ ’. Blood in her knickers, blood on the sheets, hair on the floor, hair caught in the tiny settings of a worn wedding ring. And the shame Harriet wanted to have, just to make people mad, but only in her head, only in secret, where nobody could hurt her. Harriet knew the particulars, knew the grit and tears and sweat of it, the pain of it — but not much else. Not the freedom or the joy or the anything telly and magazines said it was. Just violence and silence and quiet, supressed tears.

No, the shames were different things in two different places.

Leon would be a boy Aunt Petunia would despise, hate on sight, the kind of boy she would have dragged Harriet across the street to get away from. He was nice-looking and didn’t wear proper clothes, like Harriet did. He had cigarettes. She wondered what else he had. What had made his pupils so large, only kissed, just a hairs-breath, by a ring of blue? Did he have any now? Could he get her some? What would it cost her?

She found she didn’t care.

“Okay,” said Harriet to the cooling night air.

“Okay?”

She buried the burning filter of her cigarette into the dirt to smother it. Night was falling proper: distant streetlights glowed in the distance, but she could hear the wind whistling through the dry storm-drain, the gurgling pump-station near it with its broken light that wouldn’t turn on: nobody would see. Not if they walked through the overgrown grass, the overgrown buckthorn, through the bushes and the twisted aspen trees, climbed through the hole in the wire fence. Harriet couldn’t even see the street she had ran off of to be where she was.  If they were quiet, nobody would know except them.

She pulled off her top.

The milk and magazine laid in the dirt, forgotten.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Aunt Petunia was furious when Harriet got home. Harriet had thought of climbing in through the window in the downstairs toilet, but Aunt Petunia had been waiting on a chair in the back garden, a housecoat over her nightdress. Uncle Vernon and Dudley were asleep upstairs. They had ordered fish and chips for dinner when Harriet hadn’t come back with the milk.

“Where do you think you’ve been?” Aunt Petunia asked coldly, waiting until Harriet had tried to sneakily close the gate behind her to speak. Aunt Petunia didn’t get up from her chair.

Harriet shifted awkwardly, near frozen on the spot. It was the boldest thing Harriet had ever done, by far. The worst part was she had forgotten the milk. Leon had sent her home after another cigarette, given her a paisley handkerchief to wipe herself with afterwards because they didn’t have any frenchies. Leon had wanted to suck her neck; Harriet hadn’t let him. A hickey would be a one-way ticket to Oakridge. Or Aunt Petunia’s boney hand. In her purple top and bike shorts, Harriet thought she looked as she always did and not the least like what she’d done with Leon.

“Out.”

“Out,” Aunt Petunia said once. She smiled. Harriet had never seen Aunt Petunia smile like that before – not least of all at her. Aunt Petunia threw her hands up and said somewhat hysterically, “Out!” She got up from the garden chair. “Out, she says! _Who do you think you are?_ Get inside!”

Aunt Petunia breathed down her neck the trip through the conservatory door to the living room. Only the glass, frilly lamp was on in the living room, sat atop a crisply ironed doily. Harriet knew this only because it was her job once a month to wash and iron the doilies and table cloths. Harriet didn’t take a seat on the flowery settee or the armchairs, but Aunt Petunia strode past her to sit in the chair facing away from the front window. It was dark and the lamplight cast Aunt Petunia’s angry face in a sharp, frightening contrast.

“Where were you, hmm?” Aunt Petunia asked snidely, her face screwed up in a harsh sneer. Harriet’s heart was skipping in her chest, terrified. Uncle Vernon was just mean and stupid whereas Aunt Petunia was cold and cruel. Whatever punishments Aunt Petunia gave out always lasted longer than Uncle Vernon’s, they were more thought-out. Were designed to be nastier than a wallop. “Out having fun with other ruffians, I suppose. God, I can smell the cigarettes on you! Disgraceful!”

Harriet looked at the toes of her shoes and grabbed her arm with her right hand, holding it tight about the elbow. Shit, shit. She wanted to make her Aunt mad but not… not this way. She thought of the toast over the sink, the hidden coffee, the empty space of the cupboard. A mad that was small, a poke at a mean dog which had once bitten you. _Now you’ve done it_ , a mean voice said in Harriet’s head, _you’re going back to Oakridge now!_

“I won’t have it!” Aunt Petunia shrieked, more loudly. She seemed to realise how loud she had spoken and pursed her lips tightly. “I won’t have it – it’s bad enough with, with – I won’t have it! You hear me, I will not have _that_ behaviour within my good house! You’re lucky you’re still here, you know, and if it wasn’t for —” Aunt Petunia stopped suddenly, as though she was about to say something she shouldn’t “— well, _you_ _wouldn’t_ _be here_.”

Harriet looked up at her aunt quickly and then back at her shoes. Aunt Petunia sat up straighter, white-faced and mean-eyed and looking thoroughly like she wanted to give Harriet a good clonk.

“We’ve fed you, clothed you, we let you go to that — to that school!” (And Harriet suddenly wanted to laugh; the last thing Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had ever wanted was for her to go Hogwarts, they had fled into the North Sea to try and stop it. But Harriet didn’t laugh. She wasn’t that bold.) “You repay us with this! Stealing your uncle’s good hard-earned money, staying out after dark, smelling like cigarettes, doing God knows what! How many boys here have you — have you bewitched?”

The accusation was astonishing. Harriet stared at her aunt in bewilderment. Bewitched? Be _witched_? Her Aunt couldn’t bear to say the name of her school without looking ready to faint. And she was accusing Harriet of, of _bewitching_ neighbourhood boys? Harriet had never said anything about boys to her aunt or anyone, ever. And why on earth would she ever want to bewitch one?

“What? None!” Harriet cried, shocked. “Why would I do that?”

“They’re normal boys! From normal homes with normal parents!” Aunt Petunia rallied on, like Harriet was the worst sort of criminal. She pointed an accusatory finger at her as though Harriet was conducting a nefarious plot to swindle the teenage boys of Little Whinging of their precious normalcy for duplicitous gains. “You’re just like _her_!” Aunt Petunia cried shrilly. “Think so much of yourself, hmm? Thinking you can go and do whatever you like without getting in trouble, carrying that- that thing to get what you want! I won’t have it!”

The air went still. Harriet’s heart stuttered and throbbed at an unusual rhythm. _You’re just like her!_

“L-like who?” Harriet asked, her voice oddly quiet.

Aunt Petunia reeled back like she’d been pushed by an invisible force. She stood up swiftly from her chair and marched across the carpet to where Harriet stood, wide-eyed by the glass door to the kitchen.

A loud crack echoed through the sleeping house when Aunt Petunia slapped her across the face with cold, controlled fury.

“Go to your cupboard,” Aunt Petunia said evenly, her voice low and strained.

 Harriet scarpered.  


	2. China and Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: this fic deals with emotional abuse by a person in a caring position, and allusions to CSA, please keep yourself safe

Upstairs in Dudley’s second bedroom, Harriet had been skinny enough to wiggle through the cat-flap late at night to sneak a wee in the downstairs toilet – but there was no such luck in the cupboard.

Hogwarts and Oakridge had made Harriet soft: all the breakfasts and dinners and suppers and tea-tables had made Harriet thirstier and hungrier than ever. By the first evening after stealing the magazine and Leon, Harriet’s throat was burning with thirst and she had her legs crossed so tightly she swore she couldn’t feel her feet. Her only option was to unscrew the top of an old bleach bottle and chuck a whizz in it. If she used a bucket, the smell would be awful but if she peed in bleach and screwed the top back on it, no-one would be the wiser. Until Harriet had to clean something… but that seemed like a problem for another time.

Harriet spent most of the time in the cupboard with her back to the wall, her toes bent up against the door, gazing through the tiny grille at the cream patterned wallpaper opposite. It brought back memories of being younger and doing the same: listening to the television, Aunt Petunia going about the house, even the sounds of Dudley’s computer upstairs. When she was littler, Harriet could play with her broken toy soldiers or draw with her school things. For ages when she was in primary school, Harriet would nick paper from the art cupboard and from the scrap paper bin to take home, so she could draw in her cupboard. Harriet had none of that now: all her parchment, the pretty paintbox Hermione had given her, and the sketchbook she’d got from Diagon Alley were in her truck, even her old muggle pencil case. Instead, Harriet squeezed her eyes shut and imagined what she’d draw instead. It wasn’t as satisfying.

By night-time, Harriet had weed in the bottle of bleach, and had tried, unsuccessfully, to use one of her old drawings as toilet paper.

By the third day, Harriet was beginning to consider loosening the screws holding the pipes for the water metre for a drink.

And by the fourth day… Aunt Petunia let her out the cupboard.

At first, Harriet thought Aunt Petunia was going to slap her again. She stood in the blinding mid-morning light of the corridor, in pearls and an apron, with her usual pursed-lip-don’t-test-me expression. Harriet quickly pulled on a pair of bicycle shorts over her dirty knickers and a grubby grey t-shirt. It had been hot in the cupboard so she’d taken all her clothes off. It wasn’t like she’d been expecting visitors during her solitary confinement.

“ _You filthy animal_ ,” Aunt Petunia hissed. Harriet didn’t move from where she sat on her cot mattress.

“I was hot,” Harriet explained in a dry, hoarse voice. Her tongue was swollen and sandpapery in her mouth.

Aunt Petunia’s lips managed to disappear further into her mouth. Harriet hadn’t thought it possible. “Get out,” she ordered, so Harriet did. “Bathroom, five minutes.”

Toilets and running water were a blessing after several days in the cupboard. Harriet gratefully used the toilet, took a greedy drink from the tap, and had a quick wash with the sink and a flannel from the cupboard, wiping away old sweat and cupboard dust. Without a comb, her hair looked like she had been electrocuted, and only got worse when Harriet ran her fingers through the tangles.

Aunt Petunia was waiting for her in the kitchen. She had a mixing bowl and flour out when Harriet found her, measuring it out to weigh on a set of shining kitchen scales. They were new and electric and beeped merrily when it reached the desired weight Aunt Petunia set them at. A Christmas present from Uncle Vernon. Harriett was forbidden from using them and had to do everything by hand.

 “Get the milk and eggs,” Aunt Petunia barked. Harriet got the milk and eggs, and the butter also, just to be sure.

She stood in the corner of the kitchen, pressed into the counter, whilst Aunt Petunia combined, whisked and then poured the batter into a cake tin. It was a slow and familiar way of Aunt Petunia going about things. Quiet was either one of two things in Number Four: freedom or impending doom with no in-between. Aunt Petunia preferred to use quietness as a weapon. Harriet hated it when Aunt Petunia was like this. Horrible thoughts bubbled up in Harriet’s mind: what was Aunt Petunia going to say when the social came to take her to Oakridge? What was Aunt Petunia going to break within her own precious home to blame on Harriet, and how she would spin her ‘ _Vernon and I have been trying so hard, you see, but the girl just won’t behave!_ ’ tale this time around. Harriet’s belly felt hot and squirmy, and she wrapped her arms around herself and watched her Aunt tidy up the cake things with military precision.

“Put the kettle on,” Aunt Petunia barked without looking at her, making Harriet jump. She wiped her hands on a tea towel, hung it corner-to-corner over the oven handle, and then left the kitchen. Harriet was half surprised Aunt Petunia hadn’t thrown it at her.

The kettle was another present from Uncle Vernon, all posh with different heat settings for green and herbal teas -- though Aunt Petunia would sooner eat raw liver than drink any of ‘that horrible foreign stuff’. It gleamed on the stone worktop and Harriet felt a grim satisfaction leaving greasy fingerprints on the chrome when she filled it from the tap, set it back onto its base, and flicked the on switch.

As soon as Harriet had been able to walk, she had made tea for Aunt Petunia. None of the memories she had of them were good in anyway. Especially not the first dozen times when she had accidentally spilled things too heavy for her to pick up properly.

Harriet made up the tea-tray like a woman about to hang: a lace doily beneath a cup and saucer covered in bright gauche roses, another doily beneath a small plate with precisely two custard creams and one plain Digestive, a neatly folded matching napkin so no crumbs would fall onto Aunt Petunia’s lap.  Harriet let the teabag stew for two minutes before plucking it out, added two sugars, and then a splash of milk. In winter-time, Aunt Petunia liked a single fruit mince pie instead of the custard creams, and on really hot days, she preferred her tea cooled with a slice of lemon.

Aunt Petunia was sitting in her armchair in the living room, one ankle tucked beneath the other, reading a tabloid magazine. Or doing a good job pretending to. Like a sixth sense, Harriet could tell trouble was brewing: Aunt Petunia was dressed up nicely, with her makeup on at ten in the morning and hair freshly set. Harriet fetched the telly tray table and then, as though placing a slab of meat before a starved lion, set it close and laid the tea-tray upon it.

Then the waiting game started: Harriet stood a foot away, whilst Aunt Petunia pretended Harriet wasn’t there, reading her magazine, and taking small sips from her tea. The only sound the ticking of Number Four’s clocks: above the mantle, in the hall, the rhythmic _click-click-click_ of the oven’s timer. Harriet looked down at the deep rose carpet, her bony bare feet barely sinking into the pile, her arms twisted so tightly behind her they began to throb.

Harriet waited whilst Aunt Petunia spent an unnecessary amount of time eating the custard creams. Waited whilst she stirred her tea. Waited whilst she slid her magazine into the magazine basket and slowly, ever so slowly, removed the doily napkin from her lap, folded it in fourths, and placed it next to her now finished tray.

“Clean it,” Aunt Petunia ordered, “And come back immediately.”

Harriet did not take her time in doing as she was told. The nice tea-set couldn’t be put in the dishwasher, so she had to wash them carefully in the sink in case they chipped. She washed them quickly without putting on gloves, anxiety tight in her chest. When she popped into the utility room, Hedwig hooted softly at her when she tossed the used doilies in the linen basket.

Aunt Petunia was still sitting when she came back. She looked calm. Shrewd, even. Leon hadn’t frightened Harriet, but Aunt Petunia did. Aunt Petunia silently instructed Harriet to stand in front of her with a pointed finger and Harriet made no move to sit down on the carpet when she got there even though she knew she would likely be there a long time. Harriet wasn’t allowed on the furniture in case she got it dirty.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Aunt Petunia demanded in a firm, clear voice. The ‘you’re going to behave or else’ voice. The ‘no food today’ voice. The ‘you’re worse than the dirt beneath my shoes’ voice.

Harriet shook her head minutely.

“No?”

“No, Aunt Petunia,” Harriet answered quietly, her hands balled up in the front of her top, the hem twisted tight between her fingers. It felt as though Harriet’s stomach was both shrivelled up and filled with butterflies all at once.

Her aunt clucked against her horsey teeth. “Of course, you don’t,” she said blithely, as though she was privy to a joke only she knew. “Your parents certainly never had anything to say for themselves and look how well they turned out.”

Harriet didn’t reply. She hated it when Aunt Petunia talked about her parents: she rarely ever did, and when she did, none of what came out of her mouth was good. It made Harriet mad. If Aunt Petunia hated her so much, then why was she still bloody well in Privet Drive? Couldn’t the Dursleys just sign their rights away, like that social worker had proposed once, when Aunt Petunia had accused Harriet of stealing anything that wasn’t nailed down to be rid of her for a couple months? _So what_ if Harriet’s parents were good-for-nothings? Harriet hadn’t asked to be born. She hadn’t asked for any of this. If she were bold, maybe Harriet would have said it then, staring morosely at her dirty feet on the hoovered carpet. Instead she said nothing. For herself or anyone else.

Aunt Petunia cleared her throat, smoothed her skirt down her knees. The gaudy diamond ring on her finger glinted in the summer sun pouring through the lacy privacy netting.  “What did you do on Tuesday night after _stealing_ our money?”

“Went to the shops.”

“And after that? What did you do that took most of the evening?”

Harriet fidgeted. It was clear Aunt Petunia had already made up her mind and didn’t actually _want_ an answer. But there was no way in Merlin’s left, saggy –

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Aunt Petunia sniffed, her nose curling up into her cheeks as she gave a nasty sort of grimace. “Your Uncle’s sister is visiting, and once she’s left, you’re finished. Do you understand me? _Finished_. I’ll be calling Yvonne as soon as Vernon has the key in the engine.”

Uncle Vernon’s _sister_. Marge. Harriet’s heart fell into her stomach. Aunt Marge was singularly the worst person in the entire world, second only to Draco Malfoy and Lord Voldemort. Harriet’s palms grew sweaty. Hogwarts and even Oakridge had saved her from many of Aunt Marge’s annual visits, but Aunt Marge arriving in the summer for no good reason? It made Harriet’s skin prickle with sweat; she wouldn’t even be able to leave Number Four until afterwards. And without a doubt, Aunt Marge would bring an awful dog, too, a slobbery nasty thing with big teeth, and her ridiculous walking stick she used on her country estate and loved to use on Harriet when she felt Harriet was being particularly loathsome.

“W-why not now? Why after?” Harriet asked, her voice hollow. It felt like all the water she’d drunk from the downstairs toilet sink had evaporated from how hot her veins felt, her heart fluttering sickly fast in her chest.

“Because I said so,” Aunt Petunia said. She almost sounded reasonable, her voice even and light, like she wasn’t dishing out one of the more cruel and unusual punishments Harriet had ever been given before. Aunt Marge. Harriet full well knew Aunt Petunia despised her husband’s sister as much as Harriet herself did; it was the one thing they had ever had in common. Merlin, it was just so… so bloody _spiteful_.

Aunt Petunia, ignoring Harriet’s reddening face, continued, “You better be on your best behaviour, with no... no _funny business_. For all intents and purpose, you attend Saint Anne’s Secure Centre for Wayward Girls.”

“Okay,” Harriet said quietly. There was no way Harriet could last for Aunt Marge’s whole visit. A million thoughts rushed through Harriet’s head, trying to scrabble a plan together. So far, her only summer activities had been avoiding Vernon and avoiding getting further on either her relatives’ bad sides, so she didn’t have to deal with her social worker or Oakridge or any of that raff. To try and get her trunk back from the loft. And then the other night, to get whatever Leon had sniffed up his nose or rubbed into his gums or swallowed or smoked… _anything_ to make Harriet’s life that little bit easier.

If she were at Oakridge, it would be easier to get something. Girls had older boyfriends who sold through the fence near the bike shed and threw bottles of cheap booze over the top into the bushes. They sold all sorts, even cigarettes and condoms and promises of a good time if they snuck out to be with them after dark. Most of the men were old enough to drive sports cars and afford nice clothes. Harriet wasn’t dumb enough to climb the fence for them, but she had bought stuff before. Most girls did. The workers at Oakridge couldn’t stop them, either.

Come to think of it, Aunt Marge always had bank notes with her when she came to buy Dudley expensive presents. And Harriet knew Vernon paid Dudley to be nice to Aunt Marge. An electric shock of excitement zipped through Harriet’s veins, cooling them down, her heart slowing slowly, slowly, slowly, as a plan formed in her head. Maybe Harriet could filch a couple notes, wait until Aunt Marge and her aunt and uncle got magnificently drunk at supper (which always happened when Marge visited), and then sneak out once they’d stumbled to bed and if Vernon managed to forget to lock Harriet in the cupboard.  

 _Yeah_ , Harriet’s brain told her, _yeah that’d work._ Maybe.

And anyway, Aunt Marge felt a light punishment compared to anything she had had to do with Lockhart. If _Aunt Marge_ was Aunt Petunia’s greatest threat for spending two pounds on milk she forgot in the dirt, well. She had to see Leon again. She had to get at least ten pounds before that, too. Just in case.

“Potter,” Aunt Petunia’s voice cut through the still air. Harriet didn’t lift her gaze to look at her. The tone of this was different to her tone before. “If you say anything about _my_ _husband_ to Marge –”

She didn’t have to finish her sentence for Harriet to understand what she meant.

 Harriet swallowed thickly. “I won’t,” she answered, and licked her dry lips. Even if Aunt Marge cared about anything Harriet had to say, Harriet highly doubted Aunt Marge would believe her. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon painted her a liar to anyone who’d listen. Aunt Marge would probably just tell Ripper to chase her up the tree in the backyard again. Or tell Vernon what Harriet said and then she’d be dead twice over.

Through the fringes of her hair, Harriet could see Aunt Petunia playing with the rings on her finger, twisting them around her bony knuckles. Then Aunt Petunia stood up from her seat and Harriet shrunk back. Her face still hurt from the slap, the very rings her aunt had been playing before had caught on her eyebrow. Even the memory of it made the scabs throb as though they’d just been split. 

“I want this place hoovered and ready for her when she arrives,” Aunt Petunia said in a bustling tone, and she reached into her pocket to pull out a folded bit of notepaper. “I want all of this done today. I’m hosting the bridge club’s luncheon and won’t be in. I’ll be locking the door behind me so don’t get any _funny_ ideas.”

Harriet took the list with one hand and remained where she stood for Aunt Petunia to march past her toward the front corridor.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It turned out that Aunt Marge was not to arrive until the next day. Harriet had only just finished hoovering the upstairs and making the guest bed up with fresh sheets when Aunt Petunia saw fit to mention this, laden with grocery bags and a bridge book filled with victories and neighbourhood gossip in biro. Harriet had thrown the pillows rather viciously against the wall when her Aunt’s back was turned, fuming, all her anxieties escaping in two loose goose feathers she shoved beneath the mattress in case she got a walloping for it. 

Harriet cooked supper that night: a large dish of spotted dick and gravy for Uncle Vernon and Dudley, and a _Weight Watchers’_ boil-in-the-bag salmon and asparagus for Aunt Petunia. Even though Uncle Vernon was liable to be late from work and Dudley turned up only when he wanted to, Harriet laid the dining room table like the vicar was coming for tea. Everything was dished onto Aunt Petunia’s Royal Albert china with loud yellow borders and gauche flowery bouquets in the middle; _all the rage_ , Aunt Petunia said smugly after instructing Harriet to fetch it from the China cabinet, _Mrs Next Door was very envious of how generous Uncle Vernon could be, taking Aunt Petunia to Harrods whenever they were in London_. Gaudy was what Harriet would call it. Who needed to eat off plates with gold on them? Hogwarts had only bronze or silverware, and breakfasts were served from wooden bowls most mornings. And come to think of it, none of the foster families Harriet had ever stayed with went to such an effort for a weekday supper: Aunt Petunia asked for crystal her and Uncle Vernon, a starched tablecloth, linen napkins, and the flowers from the living room to be brought in. Which Harriet all did without question. Because she didn’t want to get murdered.

Luminous orange sun filled the dining room when Aunt Petunia sat down for her meal. Harriet had taken care to make the pink fish look somewhat pretty on its glinting plate, lest Aunt Petunia slap her with her linen napkin. Aunt Petunia often ate alone – though sometimes Harriet was allowed to eat with her. That night was not one of those nights: Harriet poured water and then wine, rotated the dishes in the oven lest they got soggy, and stacked the dishwasher whilst her Aunt ate. It was a relief when Harriet heard Dudley’s second telly be switched on, jingling with adverts and the opening theme of a soap filling the empty air.

It also meant that ensconced in the kitchen, Harriet could sneak some water whilst Aunt Petunia was distracted, and she put the shopping away. And merlin, was there _shopping_. Aunt Marge was only half the size of Uncle Vernon, though that meant very little considering she was the size of five Harriets bundled up in a trench coat, and she ate as much as her brother did. The biscuit barrel doubled in size as Harriet packed it away. Foil-wrapped teacakes, _Penguin_ biscuits in purple wrappers, chocolate bars, _Wagon Wheels_ … every cake imaginable began to burst from the tin. There was twice the usual amount of baked beans in the cupboard, and three whole _Viennetta_ ice-cream cakes to go in the freezer. If Harriet had any doubt as to whether her Aunt Marge was paying a visit, it was stacking the wine fridge next to the dishwasher that sealed the deal: every curved rack had a foil-covered cork sticking out of it.

Maybe the reason Uncle Vernon hadn’t yet bought a holiday home in Majorca was because all their dosh went on food…

Harriet stifled a snort behind her hand as she shut the fridge. For someone who directed a drill company and drove a European car, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia knew how to waste money. They ought to buy a share in Cadbury’s or something, Harriet reckoned, considering how much purple filled the snack cupboard. Dudley himself drank enough fizzy drink to fill the river Styx.

“What are you giggling about?” A voice called out from the dining room, the telly noise lower than it had been a moment before. Harriet froze and then swallowed thickly, darting over the to the open door of the dining room. Adverts reflected off the glass panels of the china cabinet, glittering in the dimming light like captured stars.

“Nothing, Aunt Petunia,” Harriet lied quietly, looking at the flower vase rather than her aunt. Her limp answer was not enough, so Harriet quickly supplied, “I had some trouble closing the biscuit tin and, and…”

Aunt Petunia looked at her suspiciously. “And?” Her Aunt’s thin arched eyebrow was reaching her piecey, curled fringe.

“I found it funny.”

Her aunt let out a sharp breath of air from her skinny nose and picked up the telly remote from where it sat on its own doily. “You’re very dim, you know that, don’t you?” She said simply, jabbing her manicured nail into its rubber buttons. “Dim as a rock.”

Harriet said nothing and daren’t move. When Aunt Petunia caught her still standing there, she raised another eyebrow, and Harriet scarpered back to the kitchen. She was still standing there, looking at nothing, when Uncle Vernon’s car pulled in, and Aunt Petunia went up to fetch the door.

Harriet dished up a large serving of spotted dick and boiled broccoli when Aunt Petunia sat him at the table and he promptly drowned it in gravy. When Harriet fetched him a bottle of stout, Uncle Vernon put his hands tight around her own on the bottle, squeezing them against the glass, before sliding upwards to take it from her. She eyed the tablecloth rather than anywhere else; she knew his eyes were trying to get her own, were burning holes into the side of her face. But Harriet wouldn’t look at him, no matter how much he tried to turn her fingers into mincemeat. He popped it open with his thick thumb, gave Harriet the sweaty cap, and frothed it into a large pint glass with a chuckle. For something that only happened in a matter of moments, getting Uncle Vernon his stout always felt much longer, like Harriet was caught in a bubble of time only meant to spook her.

“This is it, Pet,” Uncle Vernon announced to Aunt Petunia, who stopped watching telly to simper at her husband. He held his knife and fork upright in both hands and leant over the table toward her. “A hot meal with a beautiful woman,” he said, and they shared a disgusting and loud smacking kiss over their vastly different meals and Uncle Vernon’s vast stomach.

Harriet retched into a decorative vase by the kitchen door, throwing the bottlecap into dustbin and washing her hands viciously in the sink. She hated it when Uncle Vernon grabbed her when she fetched him beer. Hated it, hated it, hated it… 

  For a while, her aunt and uncle watched telly and ate their supper, chatting loudly about Mrs. So-and-So and the neighbour down the road and what about that poor tennis player who was attacked the poor dear you just can’t trust people these days and can you believe that there’s an escaped lunatic running about? Our poor Dudders ought to be careful, he could be anywhere, and he wouldn’t want to end up like that poor dear tennis player – which almost had Harriet laughing because Dudley was about as likely to play tennis as he would be crowned King of England. The Dursleys never talked about anything that wasn’t dreadfully boring and completely pointless. Even Uncle Vernon, who watched the news and _The Money Programme_ , never said anything of any substance.

It wasn’t until a travel programme came on the telly that Dudley let himself in through the front door and loudly announced that he’d eaten already, but could Aunt Petunia bring him a snack, and stomped up the stairs. 

“Girl!” Aunt Petunia didn’t need to call for Harriet to make up a bacon sandwich, a packet of crisps and some biscuits, and take it upstairs with a can of fizzy drink.  

Dudley was at his top-of-the-range computer, rapidly pressing keys, space demons being bloodily and noisily murdered onscreen, when Harriet appeared at his door. He looked at her from the corner of his eye and grunted, sweeping empty crisp packets and chocolate wrappers off his desk for her to put the plate down. Most of Dudley’s room was a mess, no matter how much effort both Aunt Petunia and Harriet made to get it tidy.

“Cheers,” he told her mindlessly, his mouth hanging open. “Shut the door, would you?”

It was almost polite, coming from Dudley. Harriet was closing it when a pair of feet climbed the stair behind her, and when she turned around, Aunt Petunia’s tall and bony frame was there, tiredly taking out her large earrings.

 “Help me, would you,” Aunt Petunia said quietly, and floated toward her bedroom. Harriet trailed behind.

The master bedroom of Number Four was as chintzy as the living room. The wallpaper was a dusty gold and patterned with red roses, the carpet maroon, the bed a gilded monster laden with squishy goose-down quilts and tasselled pillows. Aunt Petunia’s vanity sat under the window that faced outside, covered in perfume bottles and neatly organised makeup.

It was a silent ritual Harriet knew the steps to and didn’t waiver from; a ritual Aunt Petunia had sanctified from when Harriet was little. Harriet silently helped her Aunt take off her jewellery, put her heels in the wardrobe, and warmed up the electronic rollers on the vanity whilst her aunt changed into a nightdress and housecoat. She brushed her Aunt’s hair out when she sat down and sprayed it with water to set the rollers in whilst her Aunt removed her makeup with a wet cloth.

She was carefully curling the tiny hairs at the nape of Aunt Petunia’s neck when her aunt broke the silence and said, “You’re not very pretty.”

Harriet looked at Aunt Petunia’s reflection askance. It was almost as if Aunt Petunia had said this to no-one in particular, except Aunt Petunia was looking at her whilst she removed mascara from her bottom eyelashes, waiting for Harriet to respond.

When she didn’t, Aunt Petunia continued: “She was pretty, I suppose, for a girl like her.” Aunt Petunia gave a giant sniff and went to wipe away her lipstick. “It oughtn’t be a surprise you’re nothing to look at: you look nothing like her.”

 _You’re just like her!_ Aunt Petunia’s voice shrieked inside Harriet’s head. _You’re just like her!_ Her… Aunt Petunia couldn’t mean… _you look nothing like her_.

“D’you mean my mum?” Harriet asked the room, scarcely louder than a whisper, reaching over with numb fingers to turn the warmer off, all the curlers in her Aunt’s fried, dull hair. Her stomach squeezed in on itself, but Harriet couldn’t figure out what she felt, her knees jellified. Part of her had forgotten how nasty your aunt could be, when she wanted.

And it appeared her aunt very much wanted. Aunt Petunia gave her an empty, close-lipped smile. “Go tidy up,” she said, and stood up sharply, marching over the bed to pull the covers back. She picked up a frilly eye-mask from where it laid on her pillow.

Harriet shut the door tightly behind her and went to the landing. Dancing light from the television played on the wall in front of her, flashing reds and yellows and dulcet blues. _You’re not very pretty_. Harriet wanted to be sick on the carpet. She wanted to crawl into her cupboard and drink her pissy bleach and die. She wanted… she wanted…

There was a table full of dishes for her to put in the dishwasher downstairs, a tablecloth to put in the wash, napkins to soak. Wineglasses to wash one-by-one in the sink so they didn’t chip. A table to wipe down. Life would be easier for Harriet if she just went downstairs. Even if… even if… downstairs there was…

Harriet went down the stairs, step by step.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments! I changed the horrible summary, lmao
> 
> I posted this to avoid agonising over it by editing it for the millionth time

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think if you're willing, I've no writerly friends and I'm frothing at the bit for any scraps anyone's willing to throw! I have no beta and no editor, so please let me know if you find any mistakes and what have you. 
> 
> This was also inspired loads by the Never-Ending Road by Laventadorn, whose lovely and awesome, and just, it's a good fic and I'm so grateful for her work and yeah ':) 
> 
> The title, "Phaethon", is the Ancient Greek term for the planet Jupiter
> 
> (I also listened to a lot of Tori Amos, Halsey, and the Only Lovers Left Alive soundtrack whilst writing and dreaming this up. I have a full hundred plus song playlist for this, lmao)


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